


your black-hole soul

by firstdrafted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s08e22 Clip Show, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstdrafted/pseuds/firstdrafted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saving people, hunting things, the family business. For you, it's just a road: a long, blank expanse of forever, no turns or off-ramps and nowhere to go but forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your black-hole soul

Sometimes you wonder why you still do it.

Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you’re helping, in some small, mangled, messed-up way. Because if you don’t do it, who will? But those aren’t motivations, those aren’t _reasons_ ; those are justifications, plain and simple.

Sam, you know, has _reasons_. Sam has tunnel-vision clarity; Sam has a bigger picture. He wants to save people, wants to do the right thing. It’s just that sometimes, he winds up wanting white picket fences and a dog and a beautiful girl and backyard barbeques and goddamn picnics on the Fourth of July more. But the people he saves shouldn’t take that personally; he wants Normal (capital n) more than he wants a lot of things — more than he wants you.

Sam still does this because he believes. Because he cares. Because he feels guilty that he doesn’t feel guilty when he has a pretty girl and a stinking dog and people are dying without him. Because it gives him meaning, because it tells him that just because he was meant for the end of the world doesn’t mean he can’t do good.

Sam remembers the name of everyone you’ve ever saved, and how.

It’s not — not like that. Not for you. You have the long stretch of the road, nothing but wilderness and darkness around you and no way to go but ahead. The next werewolf (a fucking kid with a video camera), the next kitsune (a boy who lost his mother because he had the bad luck to be sick one night) — it’s all blood anyway. You’re saving people, hunting things, but that’s not what it’s all about.

What it’s all about is this: you’re doing 95 on a deserted stretch of road, no off-ramps or detours in sight, and where are you gonna go, huh? What are you gonna do, when you get off? Wrap yourself around a tree?

Once, Famine rasped into his respirator, “That’s one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean,” and you felt the truth of it, deep, deep down in your hollow bones and your black hole-soul. It drained you dry, sucked you up and spit you out all churned-up and with your guts spilling out and nothing left inside, and you’ve been running, running, running ever since. Forwards, always forwards.

Where else would you go? What would you do?

What’s the fucking _point_?

(Did you let the hellhound get the better of you because you were weak or because you wanted to?)

Sam gasps for breath all the way home, but you, you’re empty again, brows drawn and hands tight on the steering wheel. Crowley’s going to kill everyone you’ve ever saved, huh? Pretty clever punishment. But it was never about the saving. Not for you.

You know the truth. You’ve never been able to save anyone. Not your brother, not your father(s), not your friends. Not even your angel.

Maybe, you think, Crowley doesn’t need to punish you. You’re already dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Original [here](http://firstdrafted.tumblr.com/post/50130531956).


End file.
